Removable media types, such as magnetic tape cartridges or optical discs, are sometimes packaged into systems that allow for many items of removable media to be stored and placed into an access device when needed. Some type of automated device(s), such as robotic arms, may be used to automatically retrieve a media item from a storage slot and place it into an access device for either writing data to or reading data from that media item. For example, magnetic tape libraries are designed to hold hundreds or even thousands of magnetic tape cartridges. Depending on how many tapes a library is designed to access at once, each library includes one or more drives with which the tapes can be accessed. When a host system that manages the data stored on the magnetic tape cartridges intends to access a particular magnetic tape cartridge not currently in a drive, the host system requests that a robotic arm in the library move the cartridge from its storage slot to a drive. Likewise, when the host system determines that the magnetic tape cartridge can be moved back to a storage slot, the host system requests that the cartridge be moved from the drive to a storage slot.
Typically, if a movement requested by the host system fails, the host system receives notice of the failure so that the host system docs not proceed with operations under the assumption that the requested movement occurred as expected. For instance, if the host system requests a particular tape cartridge be moved into a particular drive and the tape cartridge does not end up in that drive, then host system would need to be notified of that fact so that host system does not attempt to access that tape cartridge using the requested drive. Thus, when a move operation is not successful, the host system may simply suspend operations until the failure can be addressed by a user or otherwise. However, while in the aforementioned example it is likely that a user would want the host system should stop operations, there may be some types of move operations whose failure the user would not want to cause the suspension of host system operations.